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Native Hawaiians

In the third part of the series, AJ+ correspondent Dena Takruri shares highlights from her experience reporting in Hawaii, from the Native Hawaiian fight for land to the movement for sovereignty from the U.S.

In 1893, armed U.S. naval forces helped American sugar plantation owners illegally overthrow Hawaii’s constitutional monarchy. One hundred years later, the U.S. apologized and admitted in a resolution that Native Hawaiians had never relinquished their claims to sovereignty. Today, many Native Hawaiians continue to yearn for independence. One activist, Bumpy Kanahele, has even created his own village as a model for Hawaiian sovereignty. AJ+’s Dena Takruri reports on the Hawaiian fight for sovereignty.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used a complicated legal framework in Hawaii called “quiet title” to sue ancestral land owners and force them to sell their lands. It was all to secure his private getaway on Kauai. After Native Hawaiians protested, using his own platform, he dropped the suits. But the damage is done, as AJ+’s Dena Takruri explored in this battle of land rights in paradise.